The Role of ICTs in Downscaling and Up-scaling Integrated Weather Forecasts for Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa

Despite global advancements in technology and inter-trade volumes, Sub-Saharan Africa is the only Region where cases of hunger have increased since 1990. Rampant and frequent droughts are one of the major causes of this. Monumental and mostly donor-funded projects have been mounted to counter this but with little success. One of the latest strategies being experimented is a community-based early warning system that seeks to integrate indigenous knowledge with western climate science. This initiative is informed by the realization that, though crucial, weather forecast information provided by the national meteorological departments has little utilization amongst smallscale farmers. Though having generated promising results, the integration project still faces the challenges of scaling up across communities as well as the lack of micro-level weather data. In this paper, we describe how the adoption of mobile phones and wireless sensor networks technology is being used to address these two challenges. Use of denser wireless sensor networks to collect local weather data and mobile phones to disseminate forecasts brings information closer to the farmers that need it most. To ensure that the non-mystical aspects of indigenous knowledge are portable across communities, language technologies (part of artificial intelligence) are used in the design of our system

Scaling Up Climate Services for Farmers in Africa and South Asia: Workshop Report

This report summarizes the proceedings of the workshop “Scaling Up Climate Services for Farmers in Africa and South Asia,” held in Saly, Senegal on December 10-12, 2012. The workshop brought together more than 100 experts from 30 countries and roughly 50 institutions to grapple with the challenge of supporting vulnerable farming communities through the production, communication, delivery and evaluation of effective agrometeorological information and advisory services; and to identify practical actions to address those challenges at scale

Implementation RoadMap For Downscaling Drought Forecasts In Mbeere Using ITIKI

Mbeere is in Eastern Kenya and it has an average of 550 mm annual rainfall and therefore classified under Arid and Semi-Arid Lands. It has fragile ecosystems, unfavorable climate, poor infrastructure and historical marginalization; the perennial natural disasters here are droughts. Of importance to this paper is the fact that despite its vast area of 2,093 km2, there is no single weather station serving the area. The main source of livelihood is rain-fed marginal farming and livestock keeping by small-scale and peasant farmers who rely mostly on the indigenous knowledge of seasons in making cropping decisions. ITIKI; acronym for Information Technology and Indigenous Knowledge with Intelligence is a bridge that integrates indigenous drought forecasting approach into the scientific drought forecasting approach. ITIKI, a framework initiated by the authors of this paper was adopted and adapted from the word itiki which is the name used among the Mbeere people to refer to an indigenous bridge used for decades to go across rivers. ITIKI makes use of mobile phones, wireless sensor networks and artificial intelligence to downscale weather/drought forecasts to individual farmers. ITIKI implementation project in Mbeere commenced in August 2012; this paper describes the implementation roadmap for this project

Regional priorities for strengthening climate services for farmers in Africa and South Asia

This report captures a process of shared South-South learning and planning towards defining priorities for strengthening and scaling-up climate information and advisory services for agriculture and food security in West Africa, Eastern and Southern Africa, and South Asia. The process began at the international workshop on “Scaling up Climate Services for Farmers in Africa and South Asia” (Saly, Senegal, December 2012), where participants collectively identified critical gaps in the design, delivery and effective use of climate services for smallholder agriculture; and self-organized into working groups to develop a set of priority actions for strengthening climate services for smallholder farming communities within and across regions in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Following up on a commitment made at the workshop, USAID and CCAFS partnered to develop a small grants program and sponsor a set of guided planning workshops to enable the working groups that emerged from the Saly workshop to further develop their visions, and obtain resources to begin to implement them. Expert working groups from all regions prioritized improving the scientific capacity of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) to develop location specific seasonal climate forecasts at the subnational scale, and enhancing institutional frameworks for collaboration between the different agencies involved in the production and communication of climate services. The Eastern and Southern Africa working group also emphasized the co-production with farmers of location-specific climate services, and the importance of assessing the added value of climate services for enhancing agricultural production and managing risk. The West Africa working group prioritized communications mechanisms for reaching marginalized groups, including rural radio and Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), and training farmers to access and use climate information. Building on the region’s existing strength in ICTs, the South Asia group emphasized efforts to identify appropriate ICT tools and build the capacity of smallholder farmers, women, poor and socially marginalized groups to access and utilize climate information services

Scaling up climate services for farmers: Mission Possible. Learning from good practice in Africa and South Asia

This report presents lessons learned from 18 case studies across Africa and South Asia that have developed and delivered weather and climate information and related advisory services for smallholder farmers. The case studies and resulting lessons provide insights on what will be needed to build effective national systems for the production, delivery, communication and evaluation of operational climate services for smallholder farmers across the developing world. The case studies include two national-scale programmes that have been the subject of recent assessments: India’s Integrated Agrometeorological Advisory Service (AAS) Program, which provides tailored weather-based agrometeorological advisories to millions of farmers; and Mali’s Projet d’Assistance Agro-meteorologique au Monde Rural, which provided innovative seasonal agrometeorological advisory services for smallholder farmers and 16 less mature initiatives operating at a pilot scale across Africa and South Asia. The case studies were examined from the standpoint of how they address five key challenges for scaling up effective climate services for farmers: salience, access, legitimacy, equity and integration

Towards Semantic Integration of Heterogeneous Sensor Data with Indigenous Knowledge for Drought Forecasting

In the Internet of Things (IoT) domain, various heterogeneous ubiquitous devices would be able to connect and communicate with each other seamlessly, irrespective of the domain. Semantic representation of data through detailed standardized annotation has shown to improve the integration of the interconnected heterogeneous devices. However, the semantic representation of these heterogeneous data sources for environmental monitoring systems is not yet well supported. To achieve the maximum benefits of IoT for drought forecasting, a dedicated semantic middleware solution is required. This research proposes a middleware that semantically represents and integrates heterogeneous data sources with indigenous knowledge based on a unified ontology for an accurate IoT-based drought early warning system (DEWS).Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, In Proceedings of the Doctoral Symposium of the 16th International Middleware Conference (Middleware Doct Symposium 2015), Ivan Beschastnikh and Wouter Joosen (Eds.). ACM, New York, NY, US

Strengthening regional capacity for climate services in Africa, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, 27 October 2015.

CCAFS (through the International Livestock Research Institute and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society) and the Africa Climate Policy Center sponsored a workshop on ‘Strengthening Regional Capacity for Climate Services in Africa’, held on 27th October 2015 at Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. The workshop, which was associated with and reported to the fifth conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA-V), aimed to initiate a collaborative effort to strengthen capacity, through African regional institutions, to support smallholder farmers with relevant climate services. The workshop brought together 17 participants including scientists and technical experts to learn from and build on examples of good practice in farmer-focused climate information and advisory services, and to share elements of good practice in food security contingency planning. Discussions highlighted two key constraints to achieving the potential benefits of climate services for smallholder farming and pastoralist communities across Africa. The first is limited capacity to produce relevant climate information that is tailored to the needs of farmers, at a scale that is relevant to farm decision-making. The second is limited capacity to communicate climate-related information effectively, in a manner that farmers can incorporate into their decision-making. Organizations present at the workshop offer several promising innovations that have potential to overcome some of the critical gaps in the production and communication of climate-related information for farmers. Gaps in capacity to produce farmer-relevant climate information are closely linked to gaps in capacity to work with farming communities to communicate the information effectively and support its use. Financial investments and capacity-development efforts should address these gaps in parallel. National meteorological and hydrological services (NMHS) have the mandate to produce weather and climate information; but institutions in the agriculture sector are generally better positioned to translate raw climate information into decision-relevant information and advisories, and to communicate that information with farmers. If climate services are to work for farmers, they must therefore be developed and implemented jointly by NMHS and agricultural technical institutions. This may require new institutional arrangements at the national level. Regional institutions, such as African Climate Policy Center (ACPC), IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Center (ICPAC) and AGRHYMET Regional Center, are well positioned to assist national governments to strengthen climate services that can benefit smallholder farmers – at scale. The workshop provided an opportunity to advance discussions about collaboration toward strengthening climate services for agriculture in Africa, through regional organizations and processes

Assessment of the use of Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach by farmers to manage climate risk in Mali and Senegal

Recently, a new approach to extension and climate information services, namely Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) has been developed. PICSA makes use of historical climate records,participatory decision-making tools and forecasts to help farmers identify and better plan livelihood options that are suited to local climate features and farmers’ own circumstances. This approach was implemented in 2016 in two sites in Senegal and Mali, with 57 and 47 farmers, respectively. At the end of the growing season, these farmers were surveyed to explore their perceptions on the use of the approach. In Senegal and Mali, respectively 97% and 76% of the respondents found the approach ‘very useful’. The approach enabled farmers to make strategic plans long before the season, based on their improved knowledge of local climate features. Moreover,evidence demonstrates that PICSA stimulated farmers to consider and then implement a range of innovations which included: (i) changes in timing of activities such as sowing dates, (ii) implementing soil and water management practices, (iii) selection of crop varieties, (iv) fertiliser management and (v) adaptation of plans for the season (farm size, etc.) to the actual resources available to them. The study also demonstrated the potential of farmer-to-farmer extension in scaling up the approach, which is of great interest especially in the current context of limited extension services in the West African region

ITIKI: Bridge between African indigenous knowledge and modern science on drought prediction

The now more rampant and severe droughts have become synonymous with Sub-Saharan Africa; they are a major contributor to the acute food insecurity in the Region. Though this scenario may be replicated in other regions in the globe, the uniqueness of the problem in Sub-Saharan Africa is to be found in the ineffectiveness of the drought monitoring and predicting tools in use in these countries. Here, resource-challenged National Meteorological Services are tasked with drought monitoring responsibility. The main form of forecasts is the Seasonal Climate Forecasts whose utilisation by small-scale farmers is below par; they instead consult their Indigenous Knowledge Forecasts. This is partly because the earlier are too supply-driven, too ""coarse"" to have meaning at the local level and their dissemination channels are ineffective. Indigenous Knowledge Forecasts are under serious threat from events such as climate variations and ""modernisation""; blending it with the scientific forecasts can mitigate some of this. Conversely, incorporating Indigenous Knowledge Forecasts into the Seasonal Climate Forecasts will improve its relevance (cultural and local) and acceptability, hence boosting its utilisation among small-scale farmers. The advantages of such a mutual symbiosis relationship between these two forecasting systems can be accelerated using ICTs. This is the thrust of this research: a novel drought-monitoring and predicting solution that is designed to work within the unique context of small-scale farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. The research started off by designing a novel integration framework that creates the much-needed bridge (itiki) between Indigenous Knowledge Forecasts and Seasonal Climate Forecasts. The Framework was then converted into a sustainable, relevant and acceptable Drought Early Warning System prototype that uses mobile phones as input/output devices and wireless sensor-based weather meters to complement the weather stations. This was then deployed in Mbeere and Bunyore regions in Kenya. The complexity of the resulting system was enormous and to ensure that these myriad parts worked together, artificial intelligence technologies were employed: artificial neural networks to develop forecast models with accuracies of 70% to 98% for lead-times of 1 day to 4 years; fuzzy logic to store and manipulate the holistic indigenous knowledge; and intelligent agents for linking the prototype modules

Climate Services Can Support African Farmers' Context-Specific Adaptation Needs at Scale

We consider the question of what is needed for climate services to support sub-Saharan African farmers' adaptation needs at the scale of the climate challenge. Consistent with an earlier assessment that mutually reinforcing supply-side and demand-side capacity constraints impede the development of effective climate services in Africa, our discussion of strategies for scaling up practices that meet farmers' needs, and opportunities to address long-standing obstacles, is organized around: (a) meeting farmers' climate information needs; (b) supporting access, understanding and use; and (c) co-production of services. A widespread gap between available information and farmers' needs is associated with entrenched seasonal forecast convention and obstacles to using observational data. Scalable innovations for producing more locally relevant historical and forecast climate information for farm decision-making are beginning to be adopted. Structured participatory communication processes help farmers relate complex climate information to their experience, and integrate it into their management decisions. Promising efforts to deliver rural climate services strategically combine communication channels that include participatory processes embedded in existing agricultural advisory systems, and innovations in interactive broadcast media. Efforts to engage farmers in co-production of climate services improve delivery to farmers and dialogue among stakeholders, but often with little impact on the usability of available information. We discuss challenges and options for capturing farmers' evolving demands, and aggregating and incorporating this information into iterative improvements to climate services at a national scale. We find evidence that key weaknesses in the supply and the demand sides of climate services continue to reinforce each other to impede progress toward meeting farmers' needs at scale across Africa. Six recommendations target these weaknesses: (1) change the way seasonal forecasts are produced and presented regionally and nationally, (2) use merged gridded data as a foundation for national climate information products, (3) remove barriers to using historical data as a public good, (4) mobilize those who work on the demand side of climate services as an effective community of practice, (5) collectively assess and improve tools and processes for communicating climate information with rural communities, and (6) build iterative co-production processes into national climate service frameworks